"Local Breads" - Black Olive Cheeks

Still in the Verona and Tuscany section of the book, my next bread is Black Olive cheeks or “Puccia”. They were a tasty wee roll that went well with antipasto and a glass of red wine!

They are another loaf made with a yeasted biga (65g water, 2g yeast, 100g flour) that is supposed to be left at RT for about an hour then placed in the fridge to ferment overnight prior to making the dough. I didn’t make the biga until 12.30am and wasn’t going to stay up for another hour to babysit the biga, so put it on the windowsill next to an open window. I made this back in September, so the overnight temperature would still have been quite cool.

Next morning made the dough as per the recipe – 167g biga, 375g water, 5g yeast, 500g AP flour, 20g salt – this I needed for about 8 minutes using my Kitchen Aid on speed 4. Then you mix in 150g of chopped oil-cured black olives and for a few minutes.

I fermented the dough for 2 hours at RT and then shaped the dough into 11 approx 75g round buns (the recipe did say to make them 60g, but I decided this was a bit small) as well as 5 bread sticks. The buns were placed onto a baking sheet sprinkled lightly with cornmeal and left to proof for about 1hr. Day time temps still not that warm, so you’d have to vary this for your conditions.

Once proofed, I brushed the breadsticks with water and sprinkled over ground rock salt and baked them and the buns for 20mins at 200C. The buns turned out a lovely honey colour.

Once again, as per the other biga/yeasted loaves in the section, no crust to speak of. The inclusion of the olives however added a burst of flavour (that would have otherwise been lacking), and moistness to the bread.